I can’t, Talasyn thought, panic setting in. But she had to. There was simply no getting around the kiss. It had since time immemorial been the gesture that concluded the marriage rites.
Talasyn inched closer to Alaric, who for a split second looked as if he wanted nothing more than to run away. She was grateful for her heels for the first time since putting them on, because the added height meant that she wouldn’t have to tiptoe. However, it was still a bit of a ways up. Why did he have to be so tall? She screwed her eyes shut, and—
It was supposed to be a quick peck lasting no longer than a fraction of a second, with none of the mess of complications that the kiss at the Lightweaver shrine had brought in. She’d had it all planned out. But his lips were warm against hers, and as soft as she remembered. She hadn’t counted on the pleasant spark, on the skipping in her soul, on the way her magic shifted inside her like a wild thing pricking up its ears with interest.
And she hadn’t counted on Alaric circling an arm around her waist and returning the kiss.
Her head spun. When she could no longer hold her position and shifted her full weight back onto solid ground, he was the one who leaned down, his mouth chasing hers, his arm keeping her firmly to him. Her hand slid up his chest, feeling his heart beneath her fingertips, how it echoed hers in its wild fluttering.
It lasted too long. Or—it ended too soon. Talasyn didn’t know. Her sense of self-preservation kicked in and she broke away first, her entire being teetering on the edge of a cliff. Alaric blinked down at her, his plush lips just the slightest bit parted.
Her ears were ringing, and it took her an embarrassing amount of time to figure out that it was due to actual gongs. The ones threaded throughout the Starlight Tower were being struck, sending their brassy musical notes all across Eskaya. The orchestra was playing again. The guests in the pews were standing up to properly herald the wedding exit. The sun was about to dip below the horizon.
Talasyn and Alaric stared at each other in the shadow of the dragon altar. They were married.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Talasyn’s giggling lady-in-waiting had detached the silk train before leaving the newlyweds alone in the schooner’s private compartment. Even without twelve feet of material dragging behind it, though, the skirt was still a massive, ballooning tent of a thing that made it necessary for Talasyn to occupy three seats in the small cabin. Alaric sat across from her, too tall and broad for the cramped space, his long legs all tangled up in the diamond-studded layers of fine silk streaming off her dress.
He couldn’t help but look at her in such close quarters. Even though he tried to restrain himself, his gaze kept flickering back to her face as she looked out the window while the schooner glided over the rooftops of Eskaya. She shone in the gathering twilight, the tips of her lashes spiked with fragments of tiny diamonds that glittered against her smooth, dewy complexion. As beautiful as she was, Alaric missed the freckles that he knew for a fact were underneath those paints and powders, naturally dusted across the bridge of her nose and the tops of her cheeks.
His eyes drifted to her lips. He shouldn’t have returned her kiss, but it had been instinct to chase after her mouth, to hold her tight against him. It had felt . . . as though everything else had been blocked out for that brief moment in time and he was free-falling and Talasyn was the only thing anchoring him.
Compared to their kiss in the amphitheater, the one at the altar had been relatively chaste. There was no good reason for it to have affected him so much. For it to be affecting him still.
Alaric looked somewhere else, desperate for a distraction. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of dropping his gaze from Talasyn’s lips, past her chin, past the column of her throat, all the way down to the swell of her breasts, enticingly molded by the white-and-gold bodice.
May the gods help me. Alaric resisted the urge to put his head in his hands in a fit of despair. I’m attracted to my wife.
“What are you doing?” Talasyn suddenly asked.
She’d caught him. She’d caught him ogling her chest.
He averted his gaze to the cityscape beyond the window. “What do you mean?” he asked, his tone as bored as he could make it.
“I know I look silly in this getup, but it couldn’t be helped. Just be glad that I talked the dressmaker out of a twenty-foot train.”
Alaric turned back to Talasyn, surprised at the extent to which she’d misinterpreted his actions. Her posture was one of stiff, injured pride, but she was nervously toying with the embroidered star pattern on her gossamer veil. You don’t look silly, he wanted to tell her.
“Stop doing that,” he said instead, reaching out to grab her wrist before she could inflict any serious damage on the beadwork. She shifted her hand in his loose grip and somehow her palm scraped along his and their fingers intertwined on her lap, amidst the diamonds and the shining thread, amidst all those elegant, swirling constellations. It was as natural as reflex, as hungry as second nature. It was a moment that carried as much fluid gravity as the time he felt eyes on him and looked up to find her.
Let go, Alaric’s common sense screamed at him.
But he didn’t. His fingertips traced the edges of the bony curvature of Talasyn’s knuckles. His thumb moved in a haphazard circle, skimming the mound of her palm. Her hand was not an aristocrat’s hand—there were calluses on fingers that were thin yet strong. It was all fascinating to him, the texture of her skin, the ridges of uncharted territory. All the while he was staring into her eyes, mesmerized by how, in this light, on this near-night, splinters of gold flecked her dark irises.
The schooner tilted into an upward trajectory, signaling their approach on the Roof of Heaven. It was only then that the spell broke and Alaric released Talasyn’s hand. He regretted doing so and, all at once, was relieved to have mustered the will to do so.
Entering the grand ballroom on Alaric’s arm, Talasyn saw that it had been transformed into a wonderland of sunset colors, as if the sky that had graced her wedding had been used to gild the reception venue. A dozen enormous bronze chandeliers hung from the ceiling, bearing Nenavar’s and Kesath’s banners and thousands of candles. The round tables were bedecked in purple cloth, burgundy napkins, ruby-encrusted vermeil flatware, and floral arrangements of cream and dusky pink. On the dais at the end of the ballroom was another table decorated in much the same manner, rectangular in shape and set for two and perfectly positioned so that everyone would have a good view of it.